Mr Chair's comic book pick of the week!

When Garth Ennis' Preacher ended, there was a great void left in the market. Preacher was the book you had to have. You couldn't wait for the next issue. The cover, the story, the beginning, the end. You'd read it in the car. You'd read it slow because you had to wait so long for the next. There still isn't any book out there that has matched that excitement. But the groomed heir to Vertigo's Preacher throne is Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. I'm not going to say it's as good, but it's good. Really good. Like Preacher: simple, expressive art, apocalyptic globe-trotting story, humor, violence, beautiful painted covers. This week's pick is #29, because it's a good example of another thing Y has in common with Preacher: masterful serialized storytelling. That indescribable knack for making you want to get your hands on the next issue.

The story is about Yorick, an English major whose only ambition is to become a magician, until every man on Earth dies a bloody, painful death at the exact same time. He's the only one left, and we follow his adventures. It takes a lot from Ennis. Mostly paying hommage, even the occasional reference. But it's definitely its own book, and one of the few that I think improves with every issue. This one features an abandoned ballpark showdown, an S&M dream sequence, and the mandatory jawdropper ending.

Of note: David Lapham, mentioned earlier in a Stray Bullets pick, took his first stab at selling out this week. After 10 plus years doing evil indie crime books, his first issues of Batman Detective Comics and The Darkness came out. The Batman story is pretty good. Real world Batman and such. Proves to be far better than the blockbuster Jeph Loeb series. Then there's The Darkness. What a weird book to do. It started with Image's T&A offshoot company from the 90s, Top Cow. Garth Ennis wrote the first four or five issues and bolted. It went defunct, then came back. Now Lapham writes it. The art in this week's is horrible. He's clearly mucking through the mythology, sorting out where he's gonna go. But the Atlantic City-based story is promising, and so are the characters. I'm going to stick with it. It's Lapham.